Stanley Jordan was born in Chicago, Illinois. He began his music career at age six, studying piano, then shifted his focus to guitar at age eleven.[1] He later began playing in rock and soul bands. In 1976, Jordan won an award at the Reno, Nevada, Jazz Festival. He earned a BA in music from Princeton University in 1981, where he studied theory and composition with composer Milton Babbitt and computer music with composer Paul Lansky.[2][3] While at Princeton in 1979 he played with Benny Carter and Dizzy Gillespie.[1]

Jordan made a cameo appearance in the Blake Edwards movie Blind Date (1987), starring Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger. In 1995 he created the score for the short film "One Red Rose", starring Hill Harper and Victoria Rowell, directed by Charlie Jordan. In 1996 he created the score for an ABC afternoon TV special, "Daddy's Girl", directed by Diane Wynter. SInce the mid 80s he has performed on numerous television shows, including The Tonite Show with Johnny Carson, The David Letterman Show and the Grammy Awards. A more complete list appears below under List of Television Appearances.

Normally, a guitarist uses two hands to play each note. One hand presses down a guitar string behind a chosen fret to prepare the note, and the other hand either plucks or strums the string to play that note. Jordan's touch technique is an advanced form of two-handed tapping. The guitarist produces a note using only one finger by quickly tapping (or hammering) his finger down behind the appropriate fret. The force of impact causes the string to vibrate enough to immediately sound the note, the volume can be controlled by varying the force of impact. Jordan executes tapping with both hands, and more legato than is normally associated with guitar tapping.

A helpful analogy to visualize this technique is the distinction between a harpsichord and a piano. A harpsichord produces sound by plucking its strings, and a piano produces sound by striking its strings with tiny hammers. However, while notes produced on a harpsichord or piano sustain after the pick has plucked or hammer has struck, fingers must remain on a tapped note for the sound to continue. This similarity is what led Jordan to attempt such a technique in the first place;[citation needed] he was a classically trained pianist before playing guitar and wanted greater freedom in voicing chords on his guitar.

Jordan's touch technique allows the guitarist to play melody and chords simultaneously. It is also possible, as Jordan has demonstrated, to play simultaneously on two different guitars, as well as guitar and piano.

He plays guitar in all-fourths tuning, from bass to treble EADGCF (all in perfect fourths as on the bass guitar) rather than the standard EADGBE. He has stated that all-fourths tuning "simplifies the fingerboard, making it logical".[4]

Stanley Jordan's main guitar was built by Vigier Guitars in 1988: it is an Arpege model on which Vigier made a flat fingerboard, allowing it to have a very low action (0.5/0.7mm). The low action facilitates the tapping technique.

^"Jordan, Stanley Biography". Bluenote.com. Blue Note Records. Retrieved November 13, 2009. After releasing a solo album on his own, he signed with Blue Note and made his major label debut in 1985 on Magic Touch….